Acclaimed actor and director Samuel West plays the character of Garry Essendine, an acclaimed director in one of Noël Coward’s best-loved works, Present Laughter. Here he talks about the role and working with Coward’s witty script.

What are the joys for you as an actor when it comes to Noël Coward’s sublime writing?

He’s an amazing writer – very funny but also very truthful. Coward didn’t just write good parts for himself, he wrote a lot of excellent parts around that. I think the heart of this play is about friendship and experience and how if you’ve reached that point in your life without taking too many drugs or throwing yourself off a bridge or something you find yourself looking around thinking ‘What really matters to me?’. It’s all on one set but has at its heart a story about what matters in a man’s life.

Garry is a bit of a cad. That must be fun to play?

Yes, absolutely. ‘Cad’ is a very good description. In fact somebody calls him that just before slapping him across the face in the play. He’s also very much a man of the theatre. Coward had a very interesting relationship with the theatre. I think he loved it, but he also in a quite healthy way hated it. He hated its insularity and its bitchiness.

Have you worked with Phyllis Logan, who plays your secretary, before?

I haven’t and it’s delightful. There are quite a lot of letters in the play – our stage management have written the letters for us and Phyllis and myself were saying how funny it is that they’ve bothered to write proper letters rather than just scrawls on bits of paper. It was the same on Mr Selfridge for me and Downton Abbey for Phyllis. That’s a really nice touch.

What’s the one thing you have to have on tour with you?

Funnily enough, what I normally like to tour with is a really good dressing gown, but of course I get nothing but dressing gowns in this play. I get to wear three or four and the character is described as owning 18. So I shall probably just have a T-shirt and jogging bottoms with me on this tour. We’re doing quite a lot of commuting from London, but the times I’m staying away all I’ll need to have with me are my partner and two-year-old daughter.

Do you have any pre and post-show routines?

I always brush my teeth, turn the lights out in my dressing room and check my flies, sometimes several times, before I go on. When I’m putting the costume on, I like to think about them being clothes not costumes belonging to the person I’m about to play. I like getting into character as you get into your clothes. And after a show? When I played Hamlet at the RSC I had a post-performance routine of a pint of Stella and a bag of pork scratchings. Nowadays I try and eat before the show – when you have a baby who wakes up at 7am you don’t want to burn the candle at both ends.

As a director yourself, what are you learning from working with [Present Laughter director] Stephen Unwin?

I’ve worked with Stephen before. The nice thing about having been a director is when you put yourself in the hands of somebody you trust you may know a bit better than some people what difficulties they’re struggling with – but you’re also more than usually grateful that those difficulties aren’t yours. Stephen and I are old friends and it’s a real pleasure, plus it’s the first time we’ve worked together for nearly 20 years. He’s directed my dad many times as well.

THE SHOW

Coward’s semi-autobiographical comedy, written as he approached his 40th birthday, is set in the glamorous world of theatre and is a witty portrait of the life that whirled around him in his heyday.

Charming Garry is determined to disregard his advancing years by revelling in tantrums and casual affairs. Finding himself besieged by would-be seductresses, his acerbic secretary, estranged wife and an obsessed young playwright, he attempts to disentangle himself as the comedy escalates.

Samuel West plays the flamboyant, self-obsessed actor Garry Essendine in Noël Coward’s play Present Laughter. The son of actors Prunella Scales and Timothy West, he has played Frank Edwards in all four series of ITV’s drama Mr Selfridge and also recently appeared in the BBC’s The Hollow Crown, marking Shakespeare’s anniversary.

His film credits include Notting Hill, Van Helsing, Iris and Persuasion. On the stage, he has performed and directed with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He stars alongside Phyllis Logan, who has been in all six series of the multi-award-winning drama Downton Abbey as the housekeeper Mrs Hughes. She was also a long-standing star of BBC’s Lovejoy, while on the big screen she has been in Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies and Every Picture Tells A Story.

The cast includes RSC and National Theatre actor Rebecca Johnson (Liz Essendine), Zoe Boyle (Joanna Lyppiatt), who has also appeared in Downton Abbey, Jason Morell (Morris Dixon) and Toby Longworth (Henry Lyppiatt)., the voices of Lott Dod and Gragra in Star Wars: Episode I – the Phantom Menace.

THE DETAILS

Present Laughter is at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, from Tuesday, July 19, to Saturday, July 23.

For tickets, from £18, call 01227 787787 or visit marlowetheatre.com.